Association between exercise habits and incident type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients with thyroid cancer: nationwide population-based study

Background We investigated the association between exercise habits before or after thyroidectomy and incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in patients with thyroid cancer.

Methods An observational cohort study of 69,526 thyroid cancer patients who underwent thyroidectomy for the treatment of thyroid cancer between 2010 and 2016 was performed using the Korean National Health Information Database.

Regular exercise was defined as mid-term or vigorous exercise at least 1 day in a week based on a self-reported questionnaire.

Patients were divided into four groups according to exercise habits before and after thyroidectomy: persistent non-exercisers, new exercisers, exercise dropouts, and exercise maintainers.

Results During a median follow-up of 4.5 years, 2,720 (3.91%) patients developed T2DM.

The incidence of T2DM per 1,000 person years was lower in patients who performed regular exercise before or after thyroidectomy than in persistent non-exercisers (10.77 in persistent non-exerciser group, 8.28 in new exerciser group, 8.59 in exercise dropout group, and 7.61 in exercise maintainer group).

Compared with the persistent non-exerciser group, the new exerciser group (hazard ratio [HR] 0.87, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.78–0.97), the exercise dropout group (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.72–0.91), and the exercise maintainer group (HR 0.84, 95% CI 0.76–0.93) had lower risks of incident T2DM.

Exercising < 1,500 MET-minutes/week in the exercise maintainer group was associated with a lower risk of incident T2DM compared with persistent non-exercisers (< 500: HR 0.80, 95% CI 0.67–0.96, P  = 0.002; 500 to < 1,000: HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.71–0.93, P  < 0.001; 1,000 to < 1,500: HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.69–0.94, P  < 0.001).

Conclusions Regular exercise before or after thyroidectomy was associated with a lower risk of incident T2DM in patients with thyroid cancer.

Graphical Abstract